


Heat

by sacrificethemtothesquid



Series: Shrapnel [9]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Furiosa is the most eaten-out character in all of fandom, Heat Stroke, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:23:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22550155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacrificethemtothesquid/pseuds/sacrificethemtothesquid
Summary: Her frown deepens. “We were up on patrol-” and there it is: she’s realizing it. He can see it in her face, the startled widening of her eyes that suddenly turns pinched and accusing, the sharp flush of red that he’s definitely not noticing as it spreads to her collarbone. “Are you fucking serious.”It’s not a question, so he’s not going to answer.
Relationships: Furiosa/Max Rockatansky
Series: Shrapnel [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/762720
Comments: 13
Kudos: 104
Collections: Mad for ‘Straya





	Heat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [battle_cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/gifts).



Most of the time, he thinks she’s remarkably good at surviving in the desert, and then Max gets walloped by the fact she’s just remarkably good at surviving the Citadel. 

Frankly, sometimes Furiosa is _shit_ at the whole desert thing. 

A perfect example is happening in front of him right now. 

It’s boiling hot outside, an ungodly heat wave that’s descended on the towers with crushing force and hasn’t let up in days. The winters may have gotten colder, he thinks, but that’s only because the corresponding summers have gotten hotter. There isn’t a cloud on the horizon, and the desert is so thoroughly baked it shimmers from horizon to horizon. He doesn’t have a thermometer - Dag might have one up on the terraces - but he doesn’t _care_ about the number; all he knows is that being outside feels like trying to breathe in a furnace. 

A furnace, he thinks, might actually be cooler. 

Furiosa, on the other hand, is determined to check on the eastern watchtower. A trio of Buzzards had come two nights ago in an attempt to hijack a run to Gastown and for whatever reason, no one had seen them and she’s pricklier than usual about it. Max knows she’s perfectly aware that there isn’t a vehicle for ten miles that can handle this heat without blowing its radiator, but distant cars and mirages have a lot in common so here they are. 

Also, he’s pretty sure she and Capable had a massive fight this morning during which he was mercifully elsewhere, and this self-imposed martyrdom might be some form of apology. Either that or she’s trying to guilt Capable with her eventual death. He doesn’t think it was even that bad of a disagreement. The heat has everyone itching for a fight.

This is incredibly stupid. Even the hardiest crops are starting to crisp and brown despite a constant supply of water and Dag’s desperately improvised shade. But she’s Furiosa and he’s Max, so he drapes himself in a long piece of cloth, rolls his eyes, and follows. He doesn’t bother to explain to her that no one is going to attack in this heat, because the probability of her listening to him right now is even smaller than the probability of anyone else being insane enough to actually _move_. To compound her insanity, she's forgotten her water bottle in her pique and is so entrenched she just growls at the offer of his.

Fine. He takes a swig and folds himself into a nearby shadow. 

He gives her fifteen minutes before she drops, and to her credit, she lasts almost twenty. One second, she’s scanning the horizon through the scope of her rifle, and then yep - she’s down. He elects to catch her instead of the rifle, and gets a shoulderful of metal claw for his trouble. 

She’s taller than he is and not exactly light, so he tucks the rifle strap over one shoulder, slings her over the other, and shaking his head, shuffles back into the tunnels. 

The worst part is that she’ll be so murderously annoyed with herself, he can’t even give her shit about this. 

The stairs are awkward for his bad knee on the best of days, but now he’s got almost twice as much mass as usual, so...it’s a challenge. More than a challenge. She’d prefer it if he took her back to her room (their room), but it’s in the other tower and it’ll snow at the Citadel before he can carry her that far. The second best option would be to haul her down to one of the lower levels, where the water is fresh from the aquifer and deliciously cold. There are also way too many stairs between here and there, and his brace is already cutting into his thigh so, again, definitely not going to happen. 

With a sudden burst of insight, he remembers that there’s actually a pool on this level, favored by some of the Milk Mothers on less-blistering days, and while it’s not the aquifer, it’ll work well enough. 

He makes it through the door, and slides her to the ground just as his knee reaches its limit. He props the rifle up on the wall, and surveys the room, shaking from the effort and breathing hard. 

It’s more or less a cave, one of many carved into the side of the Citadel by years of dust and wind. It’s open to the Waste, and at some point, a large projectile smashed through, widening the entry into more of a natural window and breaking through to the tunnel beyond. Later denizens added plumbing; he can’t quite figure why, given it’s a hell of a thing to pump this high and the gardens aren’t close enough for that convenience, but since the shallow pool is exactly what he needs right now, he’s not about to question their logic. The Milk Mothers have added an expansive pile of cushions near the gaping overlook, which in any other weather would be absolutely perfect for lounging. 

In this case, it’s still fucking hot, but the room has deep shade and slowly-circulating water, and he doesn’t have to climb a thousand stairs to get to it, so it’s perfect. 

She’s still in a heap where he’d dropped her and _fuck_ , she’s heavy, but he manages to drag her into the pool. She’s sweating, so that’s good, and if he just lets her soak a bit, she’ll come around. She’ll kill him if he breaks her metal arm, so he wrestles with the straps until he gets the thing off. For lack of anywhere else to put it, he enthrones it on a pillow, and sets about the rest of her clothes. Girdle - not complicated. Boots - complicated, but not problematic. He’s removed her leathers often enough these days that they’re hardly a challenge - unless she’s _wanted_ them to be - and right now, she’s not fighting him. He’s very aware he's skirting lines of consent, and he _hates_ that, but...heatstroke. The best he can do is get her out of her heaviest things and hope that when she comes around, she feels safe enough not to kill him. 

He’s completely sweating through his own shirt at this point, so it joins the pile of clothes at the edge of the pool, along with his belt and his big canteen, and then he hauls her in.

The water is - _pleasant_. Beyond pleasant. Orgasmic. It’s cooler than he’s expected, and such a glorious relief to the bright shards of pain in his knee. The pool is shallow at one end, barely ankle-deep, and then sharply drops to a depth close to his thighs, and he arranges her so she’s laying in the shallows, her head resting on the edge of pool with her feet bobbing at the end of her legs in the deeper end. He sits beside her in the shallows, savoring the soothing current on his knee.

If he wasn’t worried this will somehow doesn’t set off a dozen different triggers for her when she wakes up, he’d almost say it’s...nice.

It’s hot outside and the water is perfect, and her head is a steady, familiar weight against the side of his thigh. She’s not going to drown, he’s not going to drown, and his knee isn’t screaming that badly, so - he reaches over to drag a couple of the cushions closer, leans back into their impossible softness, and dozes.

It’s very nearly perfect.

He doesn’t know how long he’s out, but her voice startles him awake: “There had better be a _damn_ good explanation for this.”

He feels that the situation explains itself, really. 

Her voice isn’t panicked, and she hasn’t punched him in any of the several sensitive areas that are well within striking distance. In fact, she hasn’t really moved except for a soft _schloop_ as her feet hit the bottom of the pool. “Is there,” she asks, “a particular _reason_ I’m in the water without my pants?”

When she puts it that way... “Hot outside,” he offers.

This is apparently not a sufficient answer, because she sits up and narrows her eyes at him. “It’s hot outside,” she repeats. 

He’s starting to get the feeling he’s going to be murdered anyway. “Yep.”

“What does _that_ have to do with _this_?” She gestures to herself, and he very deliberately does not let his gaze follow the gesture. In fact, he makes a concerted effort to keep his gaze firmly fixated on somewhere above her nose. 

He can’t think of anything that’s not going to inflame the situation, so - he hums, noncommittal. 

Her frown deepens. “We were up on patrol-” and there it is: she’s realizing it. He can see it in her face, the startled widening of her eyes that suddenly turns pinched and accusing, the sharp flush of red that he’s definitely not noticing as it spreads to her collarbone. “Are you fucking serious.”

It’s not a question, so he’s not going to answer.

Her mouth twists. “Fuck,” she says again, and then much more resigned: “Did anyone else see?” 

The easy answer would be that _no one else is insane enough to be out in this heat_ , but he hasn’t been punched yet and he’d like to continue that trend. He settles for a nice, simple, “No.”

She’s embarrassed and annoyed, but she sucks the inside of her cheek. “And you carried me down here.”

He hums. 

“Is your knee okay?”

It’s not, but it never is, and the water feels amazing. “Mhm.”

“Liar,” she says. 

“Should drink,” he deflects, pointing to the canteen. 

She rolls her eyes, but takes several long swallows.

They sit, her lying in the shallows, him lounging back on the cushion. She sips out of the canteen. He definitely does not watch her swallow. 

“This is pretty nice,” she admits. 

He hums. 

“No one is going to be out in this heat.”

A solid observation, that.

“Might as well stay here.”

It’s the best idea she’s had in a week. 

She drains the canteen and slides deeper into the pool. He goes back to dozing.

It seems like the entire Citadel has retreated to the deeper, cooler levels. No one comes by. There aren’t any distant footsteps, none of the usual mechanical noise or the cheerful yells of Repair Boys and garden workers as they rappel up and down the buttes. 

It’s just - quiet. Soothing, even. It’s a level of relaxation he almost never gets to experience. The water is exceedingly pleasant, Furiosa is next to him, the voices in his head are blissfully silent, and his knee isn’t much worse for wear. 

The sun’s slid far enough toward the horizon that the room is painted in pink and red by the time he actually wakes up. She’s watching him with a languid, easy gaze. 

He blinks.

“Much better,” she says, and rolls her eyes to the ceiling. “...thanks.”

He hums. 

“Should probably go find something to eat.”

It’s still hot, and even though it’s almost approaching tolerable, he’s not particularly hungry. 

Judging by the light in her eyes, she’s not that interested in food either. “You didn’t completely undress me,” she observes. 

It may be after the end of the world, but he’d like to think of himself as a bit of a gentleman, and frankly, he prefers to take off her clothes when she’s actually conscious-

“Fool,” she says, and he realizes that’s not necessarily his nickname. She’s still leaning back against the edge of the pool, surveying him with an expression he very much approves of. She shifts slightly in the water and - oh. 

_Oh_. 

He hadn’t noticed because she’s still mostly underwater, but the clothes he hadn’t been comfortable taking off are spread out behind her on the ground to dry. Which means they are no longer on her body. Which means she is no longer wearing them.

Fool, indeed. 

She glances around the room, and he can _see_ the calculations being done. He’d do them himself, but his brain has gone blank as his mouth suddenly waters. 

She rises from the water like some kind of mythical goddess, and now isn’t the moment for propriety. He drinks her in with his eyes, the entire lean, muscular length of her. Despite occasionally being shit at surviving the desert, she is an _incredibly_ good tactician, and in the time it’s taken her to sit up, she’s determined the pool provides insufficient space. 

He has about half a second and then one of her legs is between his thighs. “You should move,” she says, and it is _definitely_ not a suggestion.

He - well, he scrabbles backward onto the cushions. It’s an inelegant term, but it’s an inelegant movement, because while a huge chunk of his brain is blaring _naked naked naked,_ there’s a not-insignificant portion that is abruptly terrified she’s going to exact a horrible retaliation-

“Hey,” she says, pausing above him like a lion above its prey. Part of him registers her expression of concern. (Part of him wonders if lions even still exist.) “You okay?”

The noise he makes is definitely not a strangled squeak. 

She sits up, the corona of predatory energy evaporating around her. He knows his face is doing something that is generally not indicative of enthusiastic consent. Other parts of his body are violently opposed to what his face is doing, but none of it matters, because he suddenly can’t breathe. 

She’s damp from the pool, she’s _naked_ in front of him, and he’s having a fucking panic attack. 

This, he thinks distantly, is the worst timing in the world. 

“Hey,” she says quietly, and shifts like she’s going to move and _no_ , he _absolutely_ does not want her to move, he just needs a minute-

She’s still searching his face for some kind of understanding, her green eyes so close and tender, and all he can think about is how he’s seen her go steel-hard and blank in the moment before she snaps a human neck, and how that shouldn’t excite him, but it _does_ -

“Sorry,” he manages. “Just-” He’s leaning back on his elbows, but he makes a vague gesture to the clothes on the floor. “Should’ve... _shouldn’t’ve_ -”

He can’t say _I’m sorry I took most of your clothes off without your permission because I didn’t want you to overheat and die, and you’re the single-most deadly thing I’ve ever seen and if you wanted to kill me for that right now, I’d be totally okay with that, but if you just want to fuck I’m totally okay with that too and would really rather prefer it._

It’s a bit of a mouthful, that. Hard to put on a greeting card. 

She raises an eyebrow, but it’s not mocking. “I knew it was you,” she says, and then moves - _oh no please don’t_ \- to settle beside him, head propped up on her stump while her human hand rests flat and calming over his heart. She leans in close to his ear. “I could smell you.”

That statement could reasonably be an indictment of his hygiene habits, but the heat in her voice goes straight to his crotch. 

“You could never,” she goes on, “do anything to me that I would mind you doing.”

From anyone else, it might be a throwaway statement, but they aren’t anyone else, and she’s staring at him with the kind of glowing intensity that makes him fight the urge to reflexively flinch and curl away. There have been plenty of times he’s accidentally done things that were Not Okay - a touch that sparked something deep and defensive, a stroke she wasn’t anticipating, the wrong thrust at the wrong moment - but she’s sent him ass-over-teakettle for it. This time, she woke up and she didn’t shred him and she’s saying everything is _fine_. Therefore, everything is _fine._

He still needs to hear her say it. He needs to hear her say it over and over, because he wants to make sure over and over that she still means it, that everything is still fine, that she’s comfortable and willing. God knows, for his own part he’s absolutely willing, in any way at any moment, but the parts of her that are intensely attractive are also the parts that make her capable of killing him without a second thought, and...he’d rather not make her do that. He’s seen her face when they’ve both rocketed awake from a nightmare. He’s seen her reaction to the blood running from his nose when she’s accidentally thrown a punch. 

He doesn’t want to hurt her, and he doesn’t want to be the reason she hurts herself. 

“S’okay?” he asks. 

“Yes.” Her human fingers slide across his skin, absently stroking the hair on his chest. He can feel his heartbeat changing, the frantic whine downshifting to a harder, purposeful pace.

She’s leaning close, studying him. Her expression is almost sad, and he _hates_ that, so he moves his head just enough to bring their foreheads together. He inhales the scent of her, the lingering cool damp that hovers above the particular mix of musk and sweat and leather. She cups the back of his head with her human hand and hums. 

From this position, he realizes, he has an _incredible_ view of her breasts. 

The energy between them has suddenly, abruptly changed. His eyes flick back up to her face, and - there, the predatory look is back, the slight, hungry curl of her lips and the brief flare of her nostrils. 

Well, they’ve established that she’s okay, and he’s okay, or at the very least he’s careening in that direction-

“You okay?” she asks, the words warm against his lips. 

It is suddenly way too hot in this room in a way that has nothing to do with the weather. 

She might be shit at the desert, but she knows him. She knows him better than he’s ever let anyone else know him, and the first time she’d seen him she’d seen clear through to the back of his skull. She’d taken him in and calculated the measure of him, and had him figured out before he’d had a chance to take a single breath. 

He’d been walloped by the dust storm, but that was nothing compared to the wallop of her presence. 

She moves and then her mouth is against his, slow and confident. She swallows him in, lazily drinking as her human fingers bury themselves in his hair. If he breathes, he’ll lose her, and so he just succumbs.

Just before he passes out - a good death, a righteous death - she pulls back, sucking his lip as she goes. She squints at him. “Is this too much?”

God, no. It’s never too much. He has no idea what too much Furiosa would be like, but he suspects he’d be dead long before he reached that point. He means to say _no_ , but it comes out more like _nnnnngh_ which he hopes very clearly communicates consent.

It must work, because she grins again and puts her mouth to the sensitive space just below his ear. His brain stutters like a missed cylinder and continues stuttering as she slowly works her way down his neck and over his collarbone, a smooth line like a nerve ending burning through his skin. 

He’s concentrating so hard on her mouth that it’s not until she’s licking her way down his ribcage that he realizes she’s working on the laces of his trousers. It’s not an easy task - one might even say _hard_ \- because the nerve ending she’s creating runs down the length of his torso to curl around his balls like a coil of glowing wire. And it is _definitely_ glowing. 

“Could use a little help,” she murmurs. 

Help. Help? _Help_. With a herculean effort, he focuses on one hand and damn near rips both the laces and his trousers in his rush to _help_. They are the only trousers he owns, but at this moment it seems like a very reasonable price, given she is naked and also tonguing along the top of his hip.

Furiosa pauses a moment to look up at him. “Okay?” 

This is okay. It’s more than okay. Nothing has ever been more okay. She can do whatever she wants. He is _thrilled_ to be this okay.

Except...he sort of wants her not to pause. The pause is not okay. Something in his face must show that - or, _not_ his face - because she smirks and drops her head back down. 

When her mouth finally slides around him, he sees stars. This is Furiosa, the best and brightest point in the universe, the cardinal to his compass, the source of his greatest pain and greatest comfort. She strips him away from himself like branches from a blast-struck tree. She takes him down to the core of himself, to parts long-thought burned away or buried and drags him, an exorable, irresistible force, 

When he comes, he thinks he actually blacks out. He thinks this because the next thing he knows, Furiosa is stretched out by his side, her human hand trailing lazy circles across his chest. “You look like you died,” she teases.

He feels like perhaps he did, and this is a _fantastic_ revelation. War Boys die once. Max, now - Max can be killed over and over again forever. He hopes he will be.

He barely has control of his limbs, but he is nothing if not resourceful so he flops himself like an overturned beetle and in a great show of gentle dexterity, drops his mouth on her clit like a descending hawk. It’s not the tender action he’s hoping for, but it’s apparently exactly what she wants because she arches up against him with such sudden force his teeth bounce against her pubic bone. 

He’d apologize if she wasn’t making that noise, and he _loves_ that noise. 

There is nothing he loves better than being between Furiosa’s thighs. If anyone ever asked his idea of heaven, he’d immediately go to moments like this, his nose in her bush and his mouth on her clit and her human hand clenched tight in his hair. The War Boys may have their Valhalla, but it’s a one-way trip; Max, on the other hand - Max will take this road as often as she will let him and rev her past her redline every time.

So he drinks, closing his eyes and losing himself in the joy of it. He loves her taste, loves her heavy musk that clings to his skin for days afterward. In these moments, he has a single purpose. The howl of his brain drowns in the hitch of her breath. She is so guarded, so tightly wound until she suddenly isn’t, and then she’s nothing but lean muscle and unabashed greed.

Yeah. He loves this. He settles onto his stomach and prepares to do this forever, if she’ll let him. The weather might be unbearable, but if he has to immolate, he will always choose the furnace of her body.

It’s after sunset when she finally pushes him away with a weak and shaking hand. He gives one final long, slow lick just to be obstinate, and is duly rewarded with a laugh and a foot against his chest. It doesn’t hurt, but she’s definitely still in charge, just how he likes it.

“I can’t move,” she groans, stretching like a satisfied, languid cat. (Cats still exist. He saw one in Bartertown once.)

He hums in agreement. 

“Should probably get some food though.”

Probably. 

“And I need to apologize to Capable.”

Not the worst idea. 

“Those Buzzards are still out there.”

Fair assessment, that. 

Her eyelids flutter a little in flushed, sleepy bliss. “Or we could just stay here.”

He decides he likes the weather just fine.


End file.
